Nine-to-five workers waste one day each week on social media at work

When VoucherCodesPro noticed significantly high traffic on their money-saving website during working hours, they wondered just how much time people at work spend using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

They asked over 1,000 people in the UK, 69% of which worked Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, about their social media use during the working day, excluding during their own time such as lunch or other breaks.

The results may concern business owners. Throughout the course of a working week 7.5 hours, a full working day for many, was spent online using social media - 1.5 hours a day on average. That's more time than the respondents spent at home on social media, which amounted to 5.25 hours.

The most popular times for checking out social networks at work were between 10am and 11am and 3pm and 4pm.

"Particularly for those with office-based jobs, it's not difficult to see why they might get tempted to access their social network profiles when they should be working. Especially with the introduction of things like Tweet Deck and Facebook's push notifications, it's actually harder than ever to switch off," said George Charles, marketing director at VoucherCodesPro.

"What employees do need to be careful of is their boss finding out they aren't working when they thought they were. Perhaps it's best to leave social networking for lunch breaks and after work!"

Tags: employment, Internet usage, social media, UK